Senior Machine Learning Engineer

About VSCO

VSCO (pronounced vis–co) is a platform that equips photographers with the tools, community, and exposure they need to expand creatively and professionally. VSCO maintains a rich and authentic creative environment that serves photographers at all levels – preserving a home for creative opportunity, inspiration, and connection. Our mission is to champion photographers so they can make it. We empower photographers to connect with other creatives and businesses with our suite of creative tools that spans from mobile to desktop and across our global community. 

We are looking for people who are driven and demonstrate initiative in taking our company mission to the next level. Employees here have the opportunity to make a big impact, and believe that when we build together, we achieve stronger outcomes than we could alone. 

Our values are critical pillars to our team culture and shape the way we hire. Read more about what you can expect when working at VSCO on our Careers Page. 

About The Role

In this role, you will turn AI and ML into exciting, reliable user-facing product capabilities. You bring a strong technical background with deep machine learning expertise shaped by hands-on experience shipping models into production and iterating based on real-world feedback. You’re motivated by measurable impact and customer delight, and you balance innovation with practicality.

You’re fluent in Python, comfortable working across the data + ML stack, and able to build and ship models quickly in ways that are maintainable, observable, and scalable to large datasets. From lightweight heuristics and classical ML to modern deep learning and generative AI workflows, you can choose the right level of complexity for the problem and execute end-to-end: framing, experimentation, evaluation, deployment, and iteration.

You value the craft of software engineering and bring a thoughtful approach to system design for ML—data quality, pipelines, feature/embedding workflows, model serving, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Because ML has the most leverage when it’s deeply integrated into a cohesive product experience, you’re a strong cross-functional partner: you collaborate closely with product, design, engineering, and data to align on goals, define success metrics, and deliver outcomes.

You stay current on the fast-moving AI landscape with a grounded perspective—curious, discerning, and able to separate durable advances from hype—so the team can move quickly without chasing noise.

The Day to Day

• Design and implement ML-powered features for search, discovery, personalization, and recommendation systems.
• Design and develop computer vision models powering the next generation of the photographer’s tool set
• Elevate our ML platform for model building, training, and deployment at scale.
• Research and implement machine learning best practices to elevate our creator platform.
• Utilize data and ML to optimize key business funnels and enhance user experiences.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with technical and non-technical teams, bringing strong business context to your decision-making and using influence to build alignment and drive impact.
• Proactively assure progress with stakeholders and continually assess prioritization in order to move the business forward.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience designing and developing ML systems for impactful product experiences.
• Proven track record in optimizing ML algorithms and building ML pipelines with a focus on reliability and scalability.
• Expertise in Python for writing production-ready, testable code and conducting exploratory data analysis (EDA).
• Strong capabilities in SQL, statistics, and tools of effective data science.
• Hands-on experience with computer vision models and familiarity with the latest trends in AI and ML.
• Prior experience with data engineering and infrastructure on cloud platforms (preferably AWS).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to articulate complex ideas and build alignment.
• Expertise in developing extensible code with LLM coding assistants

Job Perks

• Hybrid work with an office in San Francisco, CA
• Regular in-person events events to connect and collaborate
• Competitive salary & equity 
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families
• Flexible Time Off
• Company-paid parental, medical and caregiver leave
• Other perks including mental health resources and tech reimbursements

Compensation

The base salary for this position will vary based on several factors, such as relevant experience, location and your approved internal leveling assessed during the interview process. The base salary range for this role is $240,000 - $260,000. Salary is one component of our total compensation package. This position also qualifies for equity (i.e. stock options) and is eligible for discretionary bonuses based on performance. 

The benefits available for this position include flexible time off, a 401K retirement plan, insurance (medical, dental, vision, life/AD&D, short and long term disability), and 11 paid holidays. We also provide paid sick time as required by state and local law. Additional benefits and perks contained in our standard employee benefits package are also offered for this position.

Please note: 

The application window for this role will be open until at least 5/23/2026. This opportunity will remain online based on business needs which may be before or after the specified date.

As part of our hiring process, we conduct pre-employment background checks in compliance with federal, state, and local laws. Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of this background check, which includes state and federal criminal records checks, sex offender registry searches, and other relevant checks as permitted by law. 

Be careful of fraudulent job posts.

If you receive outreach from someone claiming to work for VSCO, please verify they are communicating through the proper channels (vsco.co email domain or through Greenhouse). 

Note that VSCO will never ask for financial information or sensitive personal information during the application process.